조선 후기 ‘氏’호칭 여성의 증가와 그 의미 - 慶尙道 丹城縣 文太村과 禾音峴村의 事例 -

Abstract

This writing re-examined the methodology which suggested female address terms as one of the important distinction criteria in the study on the structure of social status in the late Joseon Dynasty, especially with focus on the meaning of the increase in the number of women addressed as ‘Ssi (氏)’ in the 19th century,which was understood as one of the major clues to dismantlement of the caste (social standing) system in the late Joseon Dynasty. Female address terms were determined based on the job of the household head who was the representative of a household, and the variation in female address terms was attributable to that in a specific job group. Particularly, the ‘appellation of ‘Ssi’, which was used as a criterion of identifying yangban (the gentry) family in the study on the structure of social standing in the late Joseon,basically stemmed from the rapid increase in the number of Confucian scholars having no government position. The recent study on the scholars having no public office has pointed out that it’s impossible to diachronically classify the Confucian scholars without a government position as the gentry job holders in common. Likewise, the appellation of ‘Ssi’ cannot be regarded as the same nature diachronically, either. Particularly, it is understood that the post-19th century female address terms, in which almost all households recorded women in the appellation of ‘Ssi’, seemed to fail to retain the meaning anymore as a criterion of making a distinction of social standing.